Mental health and abortion review inadequate, says LIFE

LIFE, the national pro-life caring and educational charity, has highlighted some of the weaknesses in the new review from a working group of the Royal College of Psychiatrists which purports to show that there is no association between abortion and subsequent mental health problems.

A LIFE spokesperson noted: “This review appears to ignore some of the most important issues and some of the most important work in the area of abortion and mental health. Indeed, it contradicts the Royal College of Psychiatrists' own statement in 2008 that there is considerable evidence to support the view that abortion can cause mental health problems and that women should be warned of this fact.”

“Many studies have contradicted this review's findings, and have found connections between abortion and subsequent mental health problems, e.g. the large-scale, long-term Fergusson study from New Zealand, which was undertaken by a team of pro-choice doctors. We must also consider the work of Dr Pravin Thevathasan, based in part on specific case studies, which found associations between abortion and mental health problems, and the Coleman review from earlier this year, which was a meta-analysis of many different studies from between 1995 and 2009, and again found that there was an association between abortion and subsequent mental health problems.” 

“Both Pravin and Coleman also note the difficulty of measuring the impact of abortion on mental health because - in sessions with psychiatrists and psychologists - women may not volunteer, and doctors may not request, the information about reproductive history needed to judge whether a woman's difficulties are associated with abortion or not.”

“At LIFE we have counselled thousands of women following abortion and our experience demonstrates that many women do suffer badly after abortion, often many years later. Even abortion providers implicitly recognise this fact, as they themselves offer post-abortion counselling. The attempt to avoid the question by focusing on pre-existing health problems and the possible problems associated with crisis pregnancy looks like an attempt to change the subject and shut down the debate not for medical reasons, but for political ones.”

“Many of the studies which are used to show no association between abortion and mental health problems are limited in design, which calls into question the reliability of their conclusions that abortion is no more psychologically “risky” than childbirth. For instance, a US study from earlier this year only included women having a first abortion, when a third of abortions in the UK are repeat abortions, and it only included women who had abortions in the first trimester of pregnancy, so the women who may be more likely to experience mental health problems - i.e. those having their second or third abortion, or those having a later abortion - had their experiences deliberately ignored.”

“In addition, many studies only follow women for a short time after their abortion, when we know from experience that many women's abortion-related traumas do not surface until many months or even years after their abortion. We would argue that many of these studies define psychiatric problems too narrowly, and so don't get a true picture of women's experiences.  Just because a woman doesn't seek professional medical help doesn't mean she isn't experiencing mental health problems associated with her abortion.  Our forty years of counselling experience show that many women suffer in silence, because their feelings and their problems don't conform to a medical template and so are not taken seriously by doctors and clinics. Organisations such as LIFE speak to many thousands of women each year who are suffering after abortion - are we just going to ignore their experiences?

“We are not claiming that every woman who has an abortion will suffer serious psychological problems, or even that most women will. But it is clear that a significant minority of women who have abortions experience serious emotional and mental health consequences that are directly related to their experience of abortion. The consequences suffered by women are not easily quantifiable by statistical and scientific research, since they often do not fit into medical categories, and are not recognised as problems by doctors.  Hence to say that ‘research proves that women don't suffer after abortion' is to miss the point.”